Undaunted muckraker

Marley Shebala continues her tradition of muckraking at
the Navajo Times

Paul Natonabah, Navajo Times

How many American journalists can claim that their
reporting helped oust two presidents? Navajo
Times reporter Marley Shebala can: Her tireless
muckraking helped lead to the downfall — and eventual
imprisonment — of Navajo Nation Chairman Peter MacDonald in
1989. Less than a decade later, tribal President Albert Hale was
forced to resign after Shebala broke the story, first of his affair
with his secretary, and then of his financial improprieties,
including gross misuse of his tribal credit card.

Shebala
has only recently begun to be recognized beyond the borders of the
Navajo Nation. In 2003, she received a fellowship to teach
environmental journalism at the University of California, Berkeley.
This year, she was named Arizona Community Journalist of the Year
by the Arizona Press Club. Her journey, however — much like
the journey of the Navajo Times and other tribal
newspapers — has been far from easy.

Before joining
the Navajo Times, Shebala was the first news
director of KTNN, the Navajo Nation’s 50,000-watt AM radio
station. In 1987, she told her listeners that Chairman MacDonald
had shut down the Navajo Times — which at
the time was within the executive branch of the Navajo government
— ostensibly for financial mismanagement. She accused
MacDonald of censorship, saying he’d shut the paper down
because it had published stories critical of his leadership.

But like the Times, the radio station
was owned by the tribal government. The MacDonald administration
gave her three options: Accept censorship, resign, or be fired. At
the time, Shebala was a single mom, and caring for her very ill
mother. Still, she refused to back down. "All my life, I’ve
worked for my people," Shebala remembers thinking. "If I (accept
censorship), I’m not going to be who I am."

So she
was fired. Undaunted, for two months, she drove down to the
chairman’s office every day and sat outside, hoping for a
meeting. When MacDonald finally agreed to see her, she threatened
to file a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission. She
was reinstated, but a year later, the tribal council cut funding
for the news director position.

Next, Shebala convinced
the Farmington Daily Times to open a bureau on
the Navajo Reservation. In 1989, she was one of two reporters on
the scene when a riot erupted between supporters of Chairman
MacDonald and tribal police. Two people were killed, and several
officers badly beaten.

"It was a civil war among my
people," she says.

The Navajo Times,
which had been restarted after a four-month shutdown in 1987, found
itself at the heart of that civil war. "A lot of people
didn’t like us," says Times Publisher Tom
Arviso Jr. That’s an understatement: During the MacDonald
imbroglio, Arviso received death threats, and had his tires slashed
and his windshield broken. In 1989, after the paper had reported on
the shady land deal that would eventually lead to MacDonald’s
federal imprisonment, a mob of MacDonald supporters gathered in
front of the Times offices. Arviso sent his
staff out the back door, then went to the front window. "They had
hung me in effigy right in front of the office," he says.

Ironically, Shebala, who went to work for the
Times in 1993, says the crisis finally caused
the Navajo Nation Council to grasp the importance of freedom of the
press. In 1989, shortly after the council had removed MacDonald
from office, councilmen stood up in the chambers, pointed at the
journalists assembled in the rear, and said "without the eyes of
the people on us," they wouldn’t have been able to strip
MacDonald of his office. Later, at that same hearing, the council
passed a resolution forbidding the tribal government from
interfering with the Navajo Times or KTNN.

It wasn’t long before the new law was put to the
test. In 1997, Arviso was suspended and threatened by then
President Albert Hale for printing Marley Shebala’s stories
exposing yet another round of financial abuses. The tribal council
stepped in and reinstated Arviso. Then, three years ago, the tribal
council unanimously passed a resolution making the Navajo
Times a private enterprise.

For tribes that
lack the subscriber and advertising bases to sustain an independent
paper like the Times, The Cherokee
Phoenix offers another model. The paper is owned by the
Cherokee Tribe, but in 2000, the tribal council passed the Cherokee
Independent Press Act, which prevents the tribal government from
firing the paper’s reporters for writing accurate stories.
Mark Trahant, former editor of the Navajo Times
and now editorial page editor at the Seattle
Post-Intelligencer, says other tribes need to follow the
lead of the Navajo and Cherokee by developing a "legal process for
freedom of the press."

Still, even with legal
protections, practicing journalism in Indian Country is not for the
faint of heart.

Shebala says people often confront her,
demanding to know why she’s hanging out her "own
people’s dirty laundry." She says there "always seems to be
this higher standard" that Native American journalists and other
journalists of color are held to — not by the industry, but
by their own communities.

Shebala has reported from
Window Rock, the Navajo capital, for more than two decades now. She
says she owes her recent Arizona Press Club award to the Navajo
people. "They’re the ones that come to me with their
stories," she says. "And they only come to me because they trust
me."

Daniel Kraker reports on Native American
issues for KNAU, Arizona Public Radio in
Flagstaff.

More from Communities

It is great to see a native woman be an honest voice
for the people! When corruption and mistreatment of our
own people is happening, then the people need an honest voice,
someone who is not afraid to speak up whether it be verbally and
documented through the media. Congradulations to Mrley
Shebala for all that she has done and still doing for the
people.....

Will Marley Shabala speak out on Animal Cruelty

Earlyann Gardner

Oct 04, 2008 11:34 AM

Mr Vega of Fort Defiance's Rio Grand Special Horses and Tack sale has been witnessed by other horse traders at the Gallup Flea Market to knock a horse down, pound it in the face and head, requiring the livestock inspector to be called. This is just one example of his cruelty.

He was run out of Belen and Los Luna, no longer welcome in Grants or Riodoso, has greater than 20 court cases that are public record, and has a pending non jury trial Oct 15 for transporting horses without health certificates. This is in Belen Magistrate court where he was charge on Aug 3rd.

I have witnessed his cruelty. I bought a Tn Walker from him and a little filly paint. This was before I saw the way he treated animals, slamming gates on them trying to seperate the adult wild horses rounded up and bought at auction near Tuba City and stored until he could sell them near Belen. He was well know in the area and stopped.

He low balls any horse he buys from a Navajo and hi balls any he sells to a Navajo.